Myths
Myth #1
“Dynamic therapy only focuses on my past childhood and will not help me with the problems I’m dealing with today.”
Myth #2
“Isn’t dynamic therapy just blaming your parents for your problems?”
Myth #3
“Will I be lying down on a couch and free associating during my sessions?”
Contrary to pop psychology, effective dynamic therapy is very much focused on addressing present day problems. Dynamic therapists work collaboratively with you to better understand your internal emotional difficulties, how they occur in your current day to day, and often how they can manifest in session with your therapist to be able to address the underlying emotional causes. When relevant, the client will link these patterns to past experiences to help understand where they originated. This tends to occur after gaining a good understanding of their patterns and addressing underlying emotions.
While our attachment experiences with our primary care givers do play a significant role in the development of our personality and ability to adjust to later life stressors, dynamic therapy helps you better understand how you have learned to cope with difficulties and how these patterns might have persisted beyond their utility. Dynamic therapists help you address the complex emotions related to the relevant attachment ruptures that may have contributed to your patterns so you can move through life less burdened by old patterns that no longer serve you.
Not at all. While some traditional psychoanalysts practice in this way, contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapy is very much about the active engagement between the client and the therapist. Effective dynamic therapy focuses on actively focusing on addressing your difficulties and does not encourage rumination into unrelated topics. The goal is never to prolong suffering.
Learn more about how dynamic therapy can help you today:
ISTDP: https://www.dynamictherapy.ca/istdp
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: https://www.dynamictherapy.ca/psychodynamic-psychotherapy